Din Jin Jaro has a minion!

Kobayo the Pantry Rat

She had loved the world in life. From long-awaited sunrise to welcome sunset, and all of the hours in between, for her, there was a never-ending stream of beauty and wonder. The world she wakened to in the morning was a completely different world than the one she fell asleep in; nothing was ever ordinary or boring for her, and nothing was ever the same.

She could spend (and had spent) hours peering at the spots on a ladybug's wings or the curl of a snail's shell--spent days seeking the greatest truths in the reflection of clouds on a still lake--spent weeks learning how to whistle and moan like a tree in the autumn wind--spent months following the comings and goings of an ant colony--spent years pursuing a love affair with the very universe itself.

Din Jin Jaro was hopelessly and madly in love with the universe.

It was a rainy night when she died. As she cavorted among the raindrops and laughed at the thunder, her paws led her to a steep slope. The same mud that she would so lovingly roll around in and coat her fur with betrayed her. The giggling Jollin slipped and tumbled down into a deep ravine. In one sudden crunch, her neck was broken; her dancing heart fell still and her bubbling laughter ceased.

All at once, she was one with her only love. From the instant her heart stopped, she felt a wholeness previously unknown. A wonder. A sense of true union and belonging. She fled her broken body, eager to take her place among the planets she had tracked and the stars she had sung to. She became, just as she had always dreamed, part of the universe in the fullest way possible.

Here in this state of being, she was where she had always longed to be. She was at one with the universe, intimately familiar with every single atom, photon, and neutrino. She could merge herself with the sun--become a part of its massive furnace--and crash hydrogen atoms together into helium. She could grip a comet by the tail and ride it as it soared through empty space. She could lump together dark matter, pack gas around it, and seed her own galaxies. She could wiggle into the bellies of old stars and spread them larger; then, when they reached their largest and began to collapse, she could push their workings faster until they burst outwards, and she could ride the shockwaves out.

She could, and she did. As she darted hastily from one to the next, creating and destroying and playing with the fundamentals of everything, she swore she heard her beloved universe laughing at her antics, and she laughed, too.

It was some time later--several earth days, not that time mattered to her anymore--that she found herself looking down from her lofty perch at the world she had left behind. She would ride the sun itself as it spun in place, watching her old home crawl around her in a slow, steady ellipse. She missed it, she realized.

She continued with her antics, but in a different way. She would still crawl into the sun and fuse atoms, but when she made helium, she would now press it together into carbon. She would take that carbon and dive into the fiery heart of the earth, then merge with that energy to press and sculpt her scattered atoms into a diamond the size of her paw. She flowed with the mantle, burst out from the spreading seafloor, followed the rising gases up to the surface of the ocean and into the atmosphere. She condensed into clouds, drifted through the sky, and poured herself out over the landscape. As she coursed back towards the sea with the rivers and streams, she looked out longingly at the scenery as she passed it by.

She was a part of the universe, but now she found herself wishing to become a part of the earth again.

Somewhere along the way, as she was following the trails of wandering deer, she felt a strange tug. Curious as ever, she let it take her away over hills, into valleys, between thick forests, until she finally came to a stop. There, lying in a deep ditch, was her body.

She looked over herself with interest. Her thick fur was matted and tangled, missing in patches, and its rich brown color had become a mossy gray-green. A nasty-looking ooze was dribbling out of her open muzzle. Patches of fur were gone, exposing weathered-looking skin. One of her eyes had been fished out.

Still dead. And yet...

As she studied her old shell, Din became aware of the fact that her body was not as useless as others might think. Her time as being part of the mighty universe had granted her an uncanny knowledge of the way life worked. It was all a complex series of reactions. Reactions that she knew how to initiate. She knew how to live again.

Without a second thought, Din dove into her decomposing body and settled back in. With her knowledge of the flow of atoms and reactions, she halted decay. She could not reverse what had already been done, but at least she could prevent it from going any further. For as long as she wanted to use it, her body would hold firm.

Her heart and lungs--spongy sacks of bacteria-riddled tissue that they had been--were too badly decomposed to breathe life or push blood, but that did not deter her. She did not need them to carry out chemical reactions, not when she could do it herself. She was grateful for her energetic final moments, for they had provided her with plenty of oxygen in her blood and muscles. Some of it had escaped with decay, but enough remained for her to bring herself back.

Grasping stray electrons from the air, the Jollin forced the energy down into her nerve cells. She guided the impulses with a surprising amount of patience down into her limbs. Her muscles jerked uselessly at first, but she was persistent and continued her work diligently. After a few minutes, she stood up and opened her remaining eye.

Though she was a drifter at heart, always following the breezes and birds, the Jollin had a number of individuals who had offered her a meal and bed whenever she came to visit. Shortly after reanimating her body, she sought them out, only to be turned away because of her frightful appearance and the faintly-lingering stench of the grave. Only one took her back in, a girl by the name of Tempus. Though initially dumbfounded by her furry friend's tale, the youth accepted her and offered her a permanent place to stay, should she want it.

Thinking about it, Din realized that she did. After all she had seen and done in her life and death, she was ready for a bit of a break and a chance to settle down. And so she stayed.

-----

Din Jin Jaro lives again, thanks to her otherworldly knowledge and her own stubborn persistence. The fact that she is technically still dead--and thus, still a part of the universe in that strange, intimate way--grants her the ability to manipulate atoms and electrons, which keeps her "alive" and moving through the world.

Life as a reanimated corpse is not an easy one, but so far, she is managing. Speech is impossible for her now--she has no breath to speak with; at best, she can make a gurgling sort of groan by forcing her vocal cords to rub together--but she can still write very well, and uses that as one of her primary forms of communication. Her movements are jerky, due to the nature of how she is able to move, and she is slower and somewhat clumsier now because of it. She shuffles when she walks, and to help keep her balance when she goes about on her hind legs, she often holds her forelegs out in front of herself.

Din hates how slow she is now, but she admits that it's probably for the better. With her missing eye, her depth perception is quite poor, and moving more slowly helps her to trip less. Her senses are sharper now as well, largely thanks to her greater understanding of how they work; she can hear and smell better than many living creatures, though her sight has actually gotten poorer.

Because of her essentially "dead" nerve cells, the Jollin feels no pain. This has proven to be somewhat of a mixed blessing for her. While the pains of cramps or tired muscles no longer drag her down, any harm she incurs on her body tends to go unnoticed. Before moving back in with Tempus, she had ripped off the top half of her right ear and seriously mauled her left, tripped and cut her belly on a sharp stone, and managed batter her tail so badly that half of it was dragging on the ground, barely attached, and needed to be removed.

Despite her immense knowledge, one of the most difficult things for her to grasp has been the fact that her body cannot heal itself anymore. Her efforts to sew shut the cut on her belly actually resulted in widening it, as the flesh on either side of the cut was too badly decayed, and wound up ripping off. (Part of her intestines now poke out through the gap.) Her fur is shaggy and unkempt, as her many early attempts at taming it with a brush wound up tearing out tufts of hair; this is responsible for some of her bald spots, as the hair does not grow back. Parts of her exposed skull, as well as the nub of bone from where her tail was amputated, are somewhat chipped and battered.

As she has gone about her second life, though, she has noticed one thing that she cannot quite explain: She has discovered a rather strong hunger that is nearly constant--a hunger for flesh, and largely, for the brain of her prey. Din was a carnivore before her death, so she has no qualms about devouring other creatures, but she finds it strange that a part of their body that was once unpalatable is now something she craves. Even her knowledge of the world's workings can't quite explain it, but as it as yet to harm anyone, she is not worried by it.

She has also noticed that crows and vultures follow her around sometimes, and arrive unusually quickly when she makes a kill. She has actually tamed several of them, and while they tend to come and go as they please, one young bird in particular is her constant companion. Din and her crow can often be seen sitting together; Din will stroke his feathers and groan tenderly, and the crow will try to peck out her remaining eye if he is hungry.

When asked what her companion's name is, Din will give a crooked grin. If given something to write with, she will simply reply that his name is not something she can say aloud or write. It is not for the ears of the living or the dead, but rather for those who are one with the universe and all it encompasses.

Original character by TiMESoNG; side artwork and coding by TiMESoNG; background from Webweaver's Free Clipart.